


The Bitter Season

by i_claudia



Category: Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:45:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter is difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter Season

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/59782.html#cutid1). (10 October 2010)

Winter is difficult. George does his best to distract himself with directing small repairs and deciphering code and sorting through the shadowed underpinnings of kingdoms, looking for patterns and holes in his nets, but it isn’t always enough. When Alanna is off rescuing villages from bandits in a damn blizzard and the mail hasn’t come in for three days and he can’t escape to hide in the stables because that’s where everyone _else_ seems to be and besides little Thom has a fever and there’s no healer he trusts as a child’s nurse closer than his mother in Corus... 

Winter is difficult. George feels the walls of the Swoop pressing in, solid and respectable and utterly suffocating.

He never asked for this, never wanted it; at least once a week it all grows too terrible and he throws things in the privacy of his chamber and curses Jonathan, the Lord Provost—even the dead, sometimes, if he’s angry enough and it’s been a bad run of days, because this is as much their fault as anyone’s. He’d been a _king_ a good one, free to roam from Corus to Port Cayne to the desert and further, anywhere the Rogue had need to go. That’s all gone now; he knows there had never been a way of taking it back, but on dark nights when the snow is flying thick and close outside the windows his life still feels like little more than a perfumed trap.

The one person he never curses is Alanna. Alanna keeps him sane. Alanna comes home—because in the end this _is_ home, the home they’ve made together even if that’s easier to remember at Midsummer, looking out at the sails of fishermen in the Cove—tired, dark circles under her eyes and new lines at the corners of her mouth, new bruises to soothe, and some of the old sanity comes back into George’s life. He can shut the world out without feeling entombed because Alanna is light, is the only breath he needs. They shut the doors until it’s just the two of them kissing or talking or making love, their bodies so familiar a comfort. They fight behind these doors, roar impressively or refuse to speak, stalking around and glaring at each other until neither of them can stand it, until George is desperate for the taste of Alanna’s words in his mouth again.

They’re never truly alone; they both know that. They both belong to too many other people. Alanna may be George’s to have in his arms and in his bed, but he only gets a little piece of her: she’s Jon’s Lioness too, and the Goddess’, and the kingdom’s, just as he belongs to Miles and the Crooked God and every one of his agents. But when Alanna is home and it’s snowing so hard they both know the world must be paused in all its deeds, they can stay in and ignore everything else, wrapped quietly together while the snow closes in over their window like the finest curtains.


End file.
